Spirituality

Spirituality is matters of the spirit, a concept tied to a spirit world, a multidimensional reality and one or more deities. Spiritual matters regard humankind's ultimate nature and purpose, not as material biological organisms, but as spirits with an eternal relationship beyond the bodily senses, time and the material world. Spirituality implies the mind-body dichotomy, which indicates a separation between the body and soul.

The spiritual is contrasted with the physical, matter and the temporary. A sense of connection is central of spirituality — connection to a reality greater than the physical world and oneself, which may include an emotional experience of awe and reverence. Spirituality may also include the development of the individual's inner life through practices such as meditation and prayer, including the search for God, the supernatural, a divine influence, or information about the afterlife. Spirituality is the personal, subjective aspect of religion, mysticism, magic and occult.




While the words religion and spirituality are often incorrectly used interchangeably, an important distinction exists between spirituality in religion and spirituality outside of religion. In recent[update] years, spirituality outside of religion often carries connotations of a believer having a faith more personal, less dogmatic, more open to new ideas and myriad influences, and more pluralistic than the doctrinal/dogmatic faiths of mature religions.[1] There are, however, non-creedal mature religions (e.g., Unitarian Universalism) whose adherents can be spiritual in the sense of having a more personal faith.[2]

It also can connote the nature of believers' personal relationship or "connection" with their god(s) or belief-system(s), as opposed to the general relationship with a Deity and the rites of group worship shared by all members of a given faith.

Those who speak of spirituality outside of religion often identify themselves as "spiritual but not religious" and generally believe in the existence of many "spiritual paths" and deny that there is an objectively definable best path to follow. Such people often emphasize the importance of finding one's individual path to the divine. Some 24% of the United States population identifies itself as spiritual but not religious.[3] Secular spirituality is consistent with holding any supernatural belief, or with holding none.

Many adherents of orthodox religions who regard spirituality as an aspect of their religious experience tend to contrast spirituality with secular "worldliness" rather than with the ritual expression of their religion.

People of a more New-Age disposition tend to regard spirituality not as religion per se, but as the active and vital connection to a force/power/energy, spirit, or sense of the deep self. As cultural historian and yogi William Irwin Thompson (1938 - ) put it, "Religion is not identical with spirituality; rather religion is the form spirituality takes in civilization." (1981, 103)

Some modern religions see spirituality in everything: see pantheism and neo-Pantheism. Religious Naturalism in a similar vein has a spiritual attitude towards the awe, majesty and mystery seen in the natural world.

For a Christian to refer to themself as "more spiritual than religious"[citation needed] implies relative deprecation of rules, rituals, and tradition while preferring an intimate relationship with God. Their basis for this belief is that Jesus Christ came to free man from those rules, rituals, and traditions, giving them the ability to "walk in the spirit" thus maintaining a "Christian" lifestyle through that one-to-one relationship with God.